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The IGF 2016 Survey
What's the Next Big Thing for the Internet?

Researchers from the Imagining the Internet Center conducted a video survey of Global Internet Governance Forum participants in Mexico in December, 2016, recording interviews with 125 people from nearly 50 nation-states and various stakeholder groups about the ongoing evolution of the Internet. Use the video viewer at right to see their answers. Click on the first video to begin to cycle through the video clips or click individual videos you wish to view. Click on the numbers at the end of the video column to display additional sets of videos tied to this question. The question on this page:

WHAT'S NEXT FOR THE NET? What will be the next big thing in the Internet's evolution - what is emerging now in regard to new technologies, applications and uses?

Among the respondents are leaders involved with the Association for Progressive Communications, the Council of Europe, ICC Basis, the IGF Multistakeholder Advisory Group, Internet Engineering Task Force, ICANN and the Internet Society and business and non-governmental organization leaders from dozens of global regions/countries.

Background:

Since 2006 the United Nations has facilitated global Internet Governance Forum meetings to encourage discussion of issues. IGF is one of the World Summit on the Information Society efforts toward sustainable development. The IGF does not exert any overt control over the Internet. Those tasks are taken on by many other global multistakeholder organizations, including the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG), Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and Regional Internet Registries (RIRs), all of which consist of people who are continuing to evolve an open network on which more and more people can exchange a widening range of communications.

The Internet of 2016 is complex and becoming more chaotic. It is estimated that about 3.5 billion of the world's more than 7.4 billion people have access to the Internet. The first billion was reached in 2005. The second billion in 2010. The third billion in 2014. In 1995 only about 1 percent of the world was connected.

As Internet accessibility, quality of service and responsivness becomes more and more vital to day-to-day actions, entrenched institutions and newly rising organizations are challenged to identify and navigate intertwined threats and opportunities.

Global politics and everyone's social and economic futures are weighing heavily in the balance of the decision-making of the multistakeholder organizations that have influence over the future evolution of the Internet.

Many additional global organizations are continually working to assess how their involvement might move the future forward in concert with the technical organizations for positive change, thus the Global Internet Governance Forum is at a turning point in its own evolution in 2016.

Interview participants in some aspect of the 2016 Global IGF Video Survey include the following: